


a test of self

by BlueFingers (POPP_Writing_Group)



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Medical, Minor Injuries, Non-Graphic Violence, Pre-Relationship, Talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-09
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-10-07 01:57:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17356772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/POPP_Writing_Group/pseuds/BlueFingers
Summary: Drift needs repairs, and maybe a little hope.





	a test of self

**Author's Note:**

> chaaaaaaracterrrrr stuuuuuddyyyy

“You said  _medical emergency,”_  Ratchet growled, walking into his clinic.  “If I find out you’ve just been smoking syk in the back alleys again–”

He stopped.  

Drift was on the table, like Ratchet had asked him, sitting quietly with his hands in his lap.  It was  _unnatural._   Drift  _never_  sat quietly on the table.  The only other time that Drift had sat quietly on the table was–

“What happened?” Ratchet asked, suspiciously.  He set down his medical kit in the corner, came to stand just a few feet to the left of the sitting mech.  Historically, Drift didn’t respond when Ratchet stood in front of him and demanded things of him.

“I, um,” said Drift.  

Ratchet scanned him.  He couldn’t hold back anymore– it was an immediate impulse that he’d been tamping down ever since he’d walked in.  

“I need repairs,” Drift said, at the same time as Ratchet’s scan came back.

“Damn  _right_  you do,” Ratchet snarled, pushing Drift onto his back.  The mech visibly tensed as Ratchet’s hands came in contact with his dirty white plating, and Ratchet would have cursed himself for overstepping clear-cut boundaries if he hadn’t been so focused on the results of the scan.

“Blown audial,  _multiple_  dented abdominal sections,  _fractured T-Cog?!_ ” Ratchet said, his hands already tracing their way over Drift’s plating to feel out additional cracks.  “What happened?  No, you have to tell me for me to fix you, Drift.  Remember.  What  _happened?”_

“The same thing,” Drift muttered, looking away.  “Same mecha.”

Ratchet’s hands froze.  “Did they–”

“No.  I welded it up, after last time.”

Ratchet’s hands clenched in anger, a terrible sort of rage against people who felt that they were entitled to a mech’s body just because they wanted it.  “So if they didn’t do it again–”

“They were angry that they couldn’t.  They–”

“They did this.”

“Yeah.”

Ratchet’s hands were still clenched.  He couldn’t look Drift in the face.

“Please just fix me,” Drift whispered, his head turned away.

So Ratchet did.  

He knew that the kid was a reject of society, that he’d been unwanted since he first onlined– thrown out here in bright, shiny Iacon and thrown out again when he couldn’t survive.  So now he lived for Syk and bits of happiness in dark alleyways and did fragging terrible, awful, shoddy jobs at welding delicate panels together because he  _had to._

Drift, and those like him, were the reason that Ratchet had started up his clinic.

“Who were they?” he asked, low, after he had been repairing in silence for at least an hour.

“I don’t know.”

Drift wasn’t asleep, then.  Ratchet had hoped that he would have begun recharge, snatched some here, where he was safe.  But Drift barely trusted him enough to let Ratchet fix him.  

“Anything you remember?”

“Big.  Shiny.  Souped-up, pretty, bits and bobbles or whatever.  Rich mecha, Ratchet, what do you think?!”

Yeah.  That was just about what Ratchet had been thinking.

“Have you thought about–” he began, and shook his head.  It wasn’t his job to force ideals on the kid.  It wasn’t up to him to decide what Drift should believe in, or follow.

“What?”

“Just–”  Ratchet sighed, decided that he might as well bring it up.  “Have you heard of Megatron?”

“Mm.  Gladiator?”

“Yeah, him.  He’s got some… ideas.  About how the ones in power think they can have whatever they want, including people.  Including you.  You should… go and see his speeches sometime.  Go and… and see if it’s something you agree with.”

Drift cocked his helm as much as he could, lying back on the table.  “You agree with him?”

Ratchet huffed out a tired laugh.  “I’ve got this… well, let’s call him _friend._  Optimus.  He brought me along, told me it was the best thing he’d ever heard.  And I went.  And… it was.”  He twisted a wire perhaps more tightly than he needed to.  “I think you would benefit from listening to him.”

“I don’t have money to go to the gladiator ring.”

“You don’t have to.  His speeches are to the public after each one.  Even if you can’t get into the ring, you can meet him outside.”  Ratchet sighed.  “I wish I could do more for you, kid.  The best I can do is introduce you to someone who can really help you.”

Drift met his eyes then, and smiled– a real smile, one that beamed through chipped paint and rust-corroded lips.  “Thank you.”

Ratchet huffed.  “You’re done.  Get up.”

Drift sat up, rubbing at the back of his head.  “Ratchet, before I go, can I–”

Ratchet was already shoving an energon cube into the mech’s hand.  “I want to see you drink all of it, understood?  Those rust spots aren’t healthy, kid.  Swear to Primus I told you to come by and get some energon whenever you need it, but you never do…”

Drift, drinking his fuel, grinned and said nothing.


End file.
